CMSC313, Computer Organization & Assembly Language Programming, Spring 2013

Project Policy

Critical programming skills cannot be learned by attending lecture. You should budget enough time to work on the programming assignments as well. Please consult the time table given on the syllabus and plan ahead. Programs are due at 11:59pm of the due date. Programs will be submitted using the submit system running on the GL machines. Late assignments will not be accepted (with the one exception noted in the course description). Programs will be graded on five criteria: correctness, design, style, documentation and efficiency. So, turning in a project that merely "works" is not sufficient to receive full credit.

For this course, programming projects must be developed using the NASM assembler for the 32-bit Linux operating system running on an Intel CPU. This arrangement is not compatible with other flavors of UNIX, 64-bit Linux, Linux running on non-Intel CPUs or with assemblers for Microsoft Windows. When in doubt, the UMBC machine linux.gl.umbc.edu will be the final arbiter of what constitutes a working program. You may work on your own machines running Linux, but you will have to be your own system administrator. None of the instructors, TA or support staff at DoIT will be available to help you install or debug Linux.

Academic Integrity Policy

When you submit your homework and programming assignments, you are stating that the work was created by your own individual effort.

Receiving help from this class's instructor, teaching assistants or from the Computer Science Help Center does not violate this academic integrity policy.

You may also receive help from other sources. However, this help must be limited to:

• Discussions about the meaning of the assignment.
• Identifying syntax errors in your program.
• Identifying simple logic errors in your program.

The following is a non-exhaustive list of actions that clearly violate this academic integrity policy:

• Someone else is typing code in your program.
• You are cutting and pasting more than a single line of code (from a program that was not distributed by the instructor).
• You are looking at someone else's program while you are typing in your code.
• You receive someone else's program by email, hard copy, text message, instant message, ...
• You make your program available to another student in CMSC104 directly or indirectly by email, hard copy, text message, instant message, ...

This policy recognizes that students can learn productively from many sources including from other students in the class. Thus, this policy allows small amounts of help but prohibits outright copying. Although, this leaves a gray area between "small amounts of help" and "outright copying", it is better that we live with some ambiguity than to have a clear-cut policy that deprives the students of productive learning opportunities. Students who have doubts about the propriety of an activity should consult the instructor.

Students who violate this academic integrity policy will receive a grade of 0 for that assignment. A second violation will also result in a reduction of one full letter grade in the student's final course grade. In the case where one student copies the program of another student, both students are considered to have violated this policy. Here, copying includes not just programs that are verbatim copies, but also programs that are substantially similar and could not have been produced independently. Furthermore, all parties concerned will have their prior homework and programs checked.

We will be using software to check for cheating. You have been forewarned that there is no difficulty in comparing every pair of submitted projects.

Violations of this policy may be reported to the University's Academic Conduct Committee for further action. Egregious cases of cheating will be written up as a "more serious" infraction. In this case, you will not be allowed to drop the course. Also, a "more serious" infraction would appear as a permanent part of your student record and would be seen by potential employers when they ask for an official copy of your transcript.

For a more complete description of academic dishonesty, refer to the UMBC Undergraduate Student Academic Conduct Policy.